News

Before I get into the fixes we've implemented today on the sites I wanted to add a clarification to my previous news post regarding requiring users update to 0.46.0 of NMM in order to gain online access to NMM and our legacy support. In the post I said, "At this time I'm unsure if we'll ever open up legacy support for the previous versions again". I want to clarify that this doesn't mean we won't continue to provide legacy support at all (e.g. every time we release a new version of NMM you will be required to update otherwise you won't be able to login/download through NMM/check file versions, etc.) but it does mean that, from time to time, we will release a version of NMM that will require you to update in order to gain access to the online functionality. When I said we won't open up legacy support for previous versions again, I meant for versions before 0.46.0. It's my hope that we'll continue to offer legacy support from this point on until the next time we're required to force users to update. I believe the last time we forced an update on users was version 0.33.1 of NMM, well over a year ago.

Legacy support is important to me because I think it's important you have a choice. If you don't like something we do with NMM you should be allowed to roll-back to a version you did like, but in doing so you accept the consequences of that decision. We'll continue to move forward in ways we think are best and it's important you can choose to either continue to move forward with us or stay where you are. We can do this because the structure of our web services (what NMM uses to retrieve the file versions, download information, login details, etc.) stays relatively the same for very long periods of time. However, when we change the structure of our web services (perhaps to something more efficient, perhaps to accommodate changes with the sites) it's important that we force everyone to update, or force those who won't update into offline mode so that we don't end up DDoS'ing our servers, again, or spending extremely long periods of time trying to provide legacy support to the relative minority of users who don't update their NMM to the latest version as and when they come out, which is what happened last week. By not updating your NMM, by sticking with a version of NMM that you like or prefer, you are enacting a choice I've given you, but in doing so you understand and accept the consequences. However, please note, I don't in any way, shape or form blame you folks who don't update NMM for what happened last week. We simply should have put our foots down from the start and said "nope, you've got to update if you want online NMM". But we didn't want to because we didn't want to disappoint you.

Now I know some of you will wonder why offering the choice is quite important to me, and why I don't just force everyone to update NMM in order to gain access to the web services. After all, in doing so not only would we reduce the risk of potential issues but we'd also reduce the number of support tickets from users reporting bugs we fixed many, many versions ago. My wish to offer legacy support actually stems from my extreme dislike for the way in which Steam auto-updates my games without giving me any say in the matter. Sure, I can turn off the auto updating feature for specific games, but once an update is installed it's very, very difficult to roll it back. And I hate that. At the end of the day I bought the game and I think I should have as much control as possible over the updating process. In the same vein when we release patches, new features, UI updates and so on for NMM not everyone is going to like them and I'm willing to give those people as much opportunity as possible to enjoy the version of NMM that they prefer. Because, as I continually say, modding is all about choice, and NMM is built with that in mind. It's why it's open source, it's why we offer legacy support as much as possible.

I haven't received a single message complaining about this and indeed I believe there was only one comment about it in the previous news article but it's actually quite important to me, and I wanted to ensure my words weren't taken out of context. So there you go.

Now, on to the site fixes and updates implemented today.

First of all we've got the Nexus Wiki back up. With all the issues last week we didn't find time to port it over with the other sites but we've managed to get it across today.

We've fixed the issue on user's profiles that meant the pagination on the Images tab wasn't working (preventing you from seeing all a user's images). We've also fixed an issue with users being able to see (but not edit) other people's files in the file management area.

I'm sure many of you have noticed that you now have access to your complete download history on the sites, irrespective of whether you are a Premium Member or not. This isn't a bug, you don't need to pretend like you haven't seen it so that we don't "fix" it and patch it out. This was actually an added bonus of our centralisation process. We've changed the way that we store your download history and file download stats so that it is no longer a burden on our database cluster. I've always said that the complete download history was made a Premium Member feature because if everyone had access to it, it would have brought down our servers (300 million rows in the downloads stats on Skyrim alone, lots of people trying to view their download historys...boom). That's no longer the case and there's no longer a reason to make this a Premium only feature. So, enjoy your complete download history. Note: I'm aware the Premium Membership page still shows this as a feature, it'll be edited out.

In the same vein some people have reported that since the centralisation last week the files they download aren't being recorded in their download history and that as a result they can't endorse these files. We have now fixed this issue but unfortunately we cannot bring back your missing downloads since the centralisation. So it'll work from now on but those downloads you made after the centralisation but before today cannot be retrieved in your history.

Since the centralisation a few people have said they miss the "Nexus Network" drop-down menu not containing links to all the Nexus sites any more. Obviously now we've opened up the network to all games that list will quickly become untenable (before the centralisation we supported 24 games, we now already support 43 games...). That list could potentially grow to hundreds or even thousands of games. What we have done instead is implement a new favourite games system to the sites. Using this system you can select 8 games that you visit the most and these games will display in the Nexus Network drop-down menu for faster access.

We're still working on getting a fix out for the alpha 0.50 version of NMM to those users who upgraded. Hopefully there'll be a download link for that soon.

Update: The NMM 0.50.1 hotfix can now be downloaded. Simply over-write your install with this version. Again; this is only for people who specifically updated to 0.50 to help us test our new profiling system.